Posts by mdava

New Monopoly version features an Automatic Teller Machine

Misses the point entirely

Which, as I realised as an adult when I started playing with my own kids, is to teach children addition, subtraction while they learn some strategy and negotiation as well.

Touchnote breach: Wrote a postcard with us? Thieves have your pal's name, address

Re: This news really made my Friday afternoon...

" I think I'm long overdue for an audit of which sites I have accounts with, but rarely or never use any more... and time to start closing them.

Maybe I might start with Touchnote... but the burglars are over the hills now with their loot, so what would be the point?"

There isn't any point re the data, but perhaps there is in the sense of "I won't do business with people who don't care about my data."

Caption this: WIN a 6TB Western Digital Black hard drive with El Reg

Neologisms

Geoff didn't know it then, but one day everyone would know these as "selfies".

Oh dear, Microsoft: UK.gov signs deal with LibreOffice

Re: Cue all the usual stuff about incompatibility etc

The thing is, compatibility is the issue.

I, and many others, would immediately adopt LO as our sole office suite except for the fact that 99% of businesses use MS and compatibility is not perfect. I get that this is MS's fault (intention), but if it means that documents can't be shared and worked on without issues arising, then MS defends its position.

IMHO MS's office stranglehold is a far greater strength than the OS.

Cinnamon 2.6 – a Linux desktop for Windows XP refugees

Re: I'll stick with my MATE

"I find that I do not miss 3D desktop effects one little bit; most of what I do involves what is in each window, be it Firefox, a terminal or whatever and I use the window manager to, well, manage these windows and manage the virtual desktops. Gnome Metacity Flashback does this perfectly. It works, works well and does so consuming minimal resources."

This is what I find as well (Lubuntu user) and have struggled to find:

(a) reviews that compare / describe useful functions of other DEs; or

(b) any description of why 3D / compositing / transparency / whatever is actually useful.

This is a genuine question - any answers to (b) above gratefully received.

Just WALK IN and buy an Apple Watch. Are you mad?

Re: This largely explains

Amusingly, I am also a Nespresso customer.

One of the counter staff was most put out when I said "I'm not interested in joining anything, I just want to buy this coffee." although she did then sell it to me.

This largely explains

why I don't own any apple products.

My last experience at an Apple store (to try to arrange to fix, then replace, my son's ipod) ended with the worker ant I was speaking to saying that he would "Make an appointment for you to see someone to buy this."

It's an mp3 player. Give me the f*cking box and point me at the till. Uppity tw*ts.

Wake up! BlackBerry QUIETLY updates BB10

Action bar customisation?

A plea for help - tangentially related to the article and after extensive googling:

Does anyone know how to change the action bar, specifically the action bar as shown when viewing an email that makes "reply all" rather than reply (a terrible idea) the main/obvious action?

Thecus N4310 4-bay: A NAS-ty beast for the budget-conscious

Re: Unclear

" It performs better and has a whole lot more features installed than you might think looking at the price tag and even comes with power redundancy (if you buy a second power adaptor)"

Yes.

Opera Jon weaves a brand new browser

I appreciate that people have different needs, uses, yadda, yadda . . . but what in god's name are you doing with 2,000 tabs?!?!?

You'll get sick of that iPad. And guess who'll be waiting? Big daddy Linux...

Re: I'd try Linux mobile

"Well, if having "no apps" makes it easier to use, why not just buy a feature phone then?"

A fair point, but when the OP says no apps he means (and you know that he means) "only the basic apps".

I use only a fairly limited set of apps but I am both happy with them and wouldn't give them up: Email, Browser, Maps, eBay, Calendar, What'sApp, Camera/Editor and MP3 player is probably 95% of what I use my smartphone for, the other 5% being made up of other apps, calls and texts.

Goes like the blazes: Amazon Fire HDX 8.9 late 2014 edition

Re: Wake me up...

Try appending '/?layout=twide' (or '/?layout=tnarrow' if you're on a phone) to the end of your OWA URL

Thanks for the suggestion, but you were right this is a 2013 feature (and 2010 sucks, as per previous observation).

Re: Wake me up...

" . . . my company's mobile-unfriendly Outlook web client"

I have exactly the same problem and am bemused that the Outlook OWA doesn't have a default mobile-friendly format.

Ten Linux freeware apps to feed your penguin

Re: Hmm. Geany could be worth a look...

I am an (extraordinarily) amateur user, but Geany is great.

The ULTIMATE CRUELTY: Sandworm uses PowerPoint against Swiss bank customers

I recently read a novel called The Weirdness, in which the devil made all of his proposals by means of PowerPoint presentations. Which sounded about right to me.

£150m, three years... TWO base stations. Gov.uk? You guessed it

When I read these articles . . .

. . . I almost wish that I worked for the government, rather than just paying them to work "for" me.

I sold 10 MILLION iPhone 6es at the weekend, says Tim Cook. What did you do?

Re: Please, Please, Please

They do exist, admittedly in the minority, but they are out there.

Additionally, manufacturers have grasped that consumers might want a small phone that is in other respect (processor/RAM) are the same as the giganto-phones that are so popular.

BAT-GOBBLING urban SPIDER QUEENS swell to ENORMOUS SIZE

Re: Not just Oz.. happening in the UK aswell

Not a hoover - this is the only remaining purpose for the hard-copy Yellow Pages (or Grattan crapalogue, Argos crapalogue, etc)

UK government accused of hiding TRUTH about Universal Credit fiasco

Re: Are there ANY success stories?

Good (if depressing) point.

Re: Are there ANY success stories?

Well it's good to hear, but I'm not sure that it qualifies as "major".

My personal (least) favourite example is the £469m down the tubes with no usable output for the fire service.

Are there ANY success stories?

I'm genuinely interested to know: Can anyone point out a major government IT project in the last decade that has been a success? Or even simply come in on budget?

On second thoughts, I wonder if I needed to include "IT" in that sentence.

Top Ten 802.11ac routers: Time for a Wi-Fi makeover?

Re: Shoot marketing!

"Until we have rockets that can be flown into the sun for a reasonable cost, we have to give marketing people jobs where they are unlikely to do to much harm"

I am replying only to thank you for the above.

Gust catches Amazon's skirt, reveals glimpse of 'Netflix for books'

Re: Libraries

Drifting gently off topic here, but does anyone know why the OverDrive system (used by my local UK libraries for ebook loans) cannot be used on Kindles anywhere other than the USA?

http://help.overdrive.com/customer/portal/articles/1481616

I love my Kindle, but it would be even better if I could use it to borrow from the library as well.

HP in 'serious' settlement talks over Autonomy legal bust-up

What auditors do

You are confusing the roles of the auditor and the financial due diligence team.

The auditor reports on whether the accounts show a "true and fair" view of what happened. They do not report on:

- whether what happened is likely to continue into the future; and

- whether what happened was actually a good business proposition (you can make the dumbest deals in the history of the world and still have a "clean" audit report).

Specifically: the allegation that Autonomy inflated its sales by reporting hardware transactions. Provided that the transactions occurred, even if at nil margin, they are arguably sales of the business and could be reported as such.

The firm doing the due diligence, however, should have picked this up and highlighted it to HP. Whether they did, and whether the right person in HP was reviewing their reports, will eventually be unearthed in the courts

Brits: Wanna know how late your train is? Now you can slurp straight from the source for free

Well done

For name-checking the very excellent traintimes.org.uk.

Story gone

What about financial security/

What I'd really like to see (purely from my selfish individual viewpoint, I'm not making business decisions about cloud strategy) is an analysis of the financial stability/viability of cloud storage providers.

Given they are (almost) all pursuing the freemium approach, how confident can I be that my 5Gb of files at cheekycloudstartup.com won't be switched off by the administrators tomorrow or that Google won't suddenly decide that drive is non-core (I feel that this one is fairly low-risk :~) and will be deprecated next week?

Steelie Neelie 'shocked' that EU tourists turn mobes off when abroad

Re: Funny thing is

I loved the idea behind that book - fantastic example of using a pervasive concept so mundane that nobody notices it.

Dixons selling £68k gold, diamond, ruby and sapphire iPhone for Xmas

Twattery

Even if I win the Euromillions ten weeks in a row, I'm still not stooping to this level of conspicuous consumption.

Qatar whips covers off giant footballing vagina

I propose . . .

. . . The Qatar Quim

New iPad mini gobbles Retina display, 64-bit brain, puts on little weight

Nominative determinism

"Apple marketing man Phil Schiller"

Is it only me that finds this amusing?

Cisco email accidentally sent to 1000s of employees causes message list MAYHEM

Reply-all should require more input

Reply-all is fine, but it is proved time and time again that it's used inappropriately.

I think all email clients should require that when you click "reply-all" you have to individually say "yes" to each of the email addresses that you are responding to.

I can't think of a valid reason to reply-all to more than 20 people, so doesn't seem unworkable.

Logitech launches MEGA-PRICEY 15-in-1 remote

Re: Who are they kidding?

For the price of a *large* TV. I bought a 32" own-brand from Sainsburys at Xmas (for the kids to XBox on) with my Nectar points for substantially less than that!

Sympathetic Scots scoff-house offers hard-up Apple fanbois a discount

Re: He makes Chilli Jam !

Chilli Jam is finally going mainstream - Sainsburys make a pretty good one that can be found in a cubic glass far next to the pickles and suchlike.

Watchdog halts Toyota Grand Theft Auto-esque advert

Re: just TWO people?

I have never understood this either.

Even if you assume that each complainant represents a thousand others who shared their view but were too lazy to do anything about it, that is still only three-thousandths of a percent of the population.

Also, I thought the ad was not bad.

Sony promotes Vita with QUAD-JUBBED WOMAN

Risque French ads

Reminds of this quality effort http://files.coloribus.com/files/adsarchive/part_359/3599205/file/manix-lubricant-harbour-small-98340.jpg

Facebook phone app attempts to seize ALL YOUR MAIL

Malware

Wow! Just wow! That is genuinely outrageous behaviour.

Thank god I uninstalled FB's slow, cr@ppy app. They deserve a LOT of abuse for this.

National Rail Enquiries

What about traintimes.org.uk?

This site works for me - whether on a PC or a smartphone - no pointless graphics, just information. I believe that it scrapes all the info from the National Rail website, so is just as up-to-date.

You can bookmark your favourite stations, departure boards or the "get me home" function as (eg) http://traintimes.org.uk/nearest/london

Spotify dances onto iPad

Re: Great

"......browse and choose music whilst driving"

What. The. F*ck? I seriously hope that you live far away from me.

Supermodel-fiddling tool Photoshop CS6 flinged in free beta

Re: And wait for the....

The "home user who needs to resize and crop a picture" should use Irfanview.

Actually, everyone should use Irfanview (for the things that it is best at).

So, what IS the worst film ever made?

I'd like to nominate Moulin Rouge, although (bizarrely) apparently a lot of other people liked it.

Renault Mégane 265 Trophy 2.0 turbo

I was behind some boring hatch the other day and spotted a decal on the back with the now-familiar Nurburgring lap shape.

However, just as I was preparing to sigh I noticed that underneath the text had been changed to "Notbothering".

Made me chuckle, anyway.

Watchdog hits out at malware racking up premium-rate charges

I agree 100%. It is wholly irrational for anyone, under any circumstance, to be able to charge your phone bill for tens or hundreds of pounds. There should be a low cap for one-off charges (a fiver?) and an even lower cap for these scams where your phone gets charged repeatedly for rubbish like ring-tones, wallpaper or horoscopes*.

* For the avoidance of doubt, I haven't been robbed for these things, but my son was unfortunately sufficiently naive to be caught out. Until, having put a tenner on his PAYG account I told him to check it *15*minutes*later* and found that three (!) £2.50 charges had been taken immediately. I phoned the network and told them they could refund the money or give me a PAC code.

Tomorrow's smartphone tech today

What I *actually* want to see

Is a smartphone with a sensible battery life.

The (absence of any) useful battery life on my otherwise pretty cool smartphone is pissing me off so much that I'm seriously considering a £10 Tesco dumbphone as my next handset.

LinkedIn scoops up browser plugin Rapportive: 'We fell in love'

Re: What Privacy Policy?

I know what you mean and share your cynicism, but the same suggestions-of-friends-they-couldn't-possibly-know-about happens on (inter alia) Facebook as well and you have to assume that it is as a result of the *other* person letting FB have access to their email contact list. Don't you?

Groupon's pants 'Weight Loss HOTPANTS' ad banned

That's a tired, tired campaign. I wish they'd stop it.

Nokia to sell off luxury phone brand

"...sells basic mobile phones with classy cases to the overpaid"

It's rare to see a business description that is both so concise and so accurate.

Bishop to bless road salt supplies for added winter safety

What a crock

Is someone going to pop round and sprinkle some fairy-dust on it as well?

Gadget Shop kingpin cuffed in nightclub 'toilet sex' incident

Coincidence?

That the link immediately below the comments link is:

"Previous ← Three touts dongle-sharing DIY hotspot box"

Kingston Wi-Drive wireless flash storage

Which is even funnier . . .

. . .. when I can buy a 16Gb MicroSD for my android for less than fifteen quid. :~)